glad that anthony elliott did not evade from the real problem, in 'identity troubles: an introduction' (2016),
... this needs to be a theory of the human subject which takes stock of posthuman transformations in biotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence.
(Elliott, Anthony. Identity Troubles: An introduction (p. 2). Taylor and Francis. Kindle edition)
* but the problem is, he could do it, only with words, and later, he even had to seek help from that old friend psychoanalysis, lacan and klein mainly, both of which could not possibly see it coming, in mid-twentieth century
There are four key socio-cultural drivers, I shall argue, which are essential to understanding the metamorphosis of identity today. (ibid, p.7)
First, there is the influence of globalization on intensifying individualization or new forms of individualism (ibid, p. 7)
A second field of analysis particularly important for the investigation of identity is that of mobilities. (ibid, p. 9)
The twenty-first century is a world which is at once intensely innovative and dangerous, riven between stunning opportunity and wholesale disaster. It is fair to say that none of the major figures of classical social theory – Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud – anticipated just how far-reaching processes of technological change would be in terms of providing systematic transformations in the relation between self and society. (ibid, p. 12)
Indeed the status of identity in the age of information science and biogenetics is one of the most significant debates now occurring, and it brings us to the third major theme of this book – the conditions and consequences of the posthuman condition. (p. 12)
If today identity troubles are overloaded from one direction by the force-fields of individualization, reinvention, mobilities and posthumanism, they are additionally intensified from another by transformations of affect. This brings us, finally, to the shaping and reshaping of identity formations today at the level of the affective, fantasy-driven, desire-laden investments of the human subject. (ibid, pp. 13-14)
That is to say, global transformations are not only a matter of corporate reinventions, mass migrations or of biomedical revolutions; such transformations reach all the way down into structures of subjectivity and affect people in the most intimately emotional ways. ... I examine aspects of this distribution of affective transformations at the core of contemporary subjectivities in this book through post-Freudian psychoanalysis, and specifically draw from a range of recent European contributions in post-Lacanian and post-Kleinian theories. (ibid, p. 14)
* now, here is the fallacy, i don't think transformations of affect make sense for posthumanism, though we know man can love his robot, vice versa, and robots can be more human than human, which is to say that, man WILL be less human than human (see blade runner 2049)
